Nine people are feared to have died after a US coastguard Hercules plane collided with a Marine Corps helicopter off the coast of southern California, officials said today.
The crash was reported at 7.10pm local time yesterday. It happened around 50 miles off the coast of San Diego county near San Clemente, the southernmost of a chain of islands off California, which is owned by the US navy and used for training.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said a nearby pilot had reported seeing a fireball at the time of the accident.
A Marine Corps spokesman said an AH-1W Super Cobra helicopter was known to have gone down but no further details were available.
The helicopter had been based at Camp Pendleton, a training facility on the southern Californian coast.
Ian Gregor, an FAA spokesman, said two people were on board the helicopter and seven on the C-130 Hercules, a four-engined turboprop plane used around the world as a troops and cargo carrier.
Gregor added that coastguard crews had seen debris from the plane. Coastguard and US Navy ships and helicopters were continuing to search the area.
Weather conditions at the time of the collision were reported to have been good.
Earlier this week, a Cobra was involved in a collision with another US helicopter in Afghanistan, killing four US troops.
In May, two Marines died when their Super Cobra crashed in a forest in southern California. A subsequent investigation found a transmission cover that had not been properly secured flew off and hit the tail rotor.
Nine feared dead after US coastguard plane hits helicopter | World news | guardian.co.uk
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